The Indian mobile Internet market is facing a transformative change this year. According to eMarketer, the global mobile phone messaging apps user base grew 32% over the year to 1.4 billion consumers in 2015 and is expected to grow to 2.19 billion users by the year 2019. Over-the-top (OTT) mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat, have shown heavy usage in Asia-Pacific, which accounts for 58% of the world’s messaging app population. Latin America has the biggest usage with 68.1% of mobile internet users using a mobile messaging app once a month. India’s home-grown service Hike is the latest member to join the Billion Dollar Unicorn club in the sector. Hike was well received in India and as of January this year claimed to have more than 100 million users with 95% of them based out of India. 90% of the user base is aged under 30 years and the app sees an exchange of over 40 billion messages per month. Hike has made a big presence in the Indian market by customizing its offering to the local flavor. Read more